Heh

The Horror, The Horror:

Walter Shapiro is really frightened by this Rick Perry business. He offers several reasons, the most laughable of which is his visceral aversion to firearms. I can't help but notice that we've come a long way.

Anti-Intellectualism. Liberals revere high SAT scores. That is why it is no accident that, over the past century, the Democrats have nominated for president five former college or law school professors (Woodrow Wilson, John W. Davis, George McGovern, Bill Clinton, and Barack Obama) plus Hubert Humphrey, who was a graduate teaching fellow while working on a Ph.D.

Democrats snootily ridiculed George W. Bush’s scholarly performance, but compared to Perry, the 43rd president—who earned a B.A. from Yale and a Harvard M.B.A.—seems as well educated as John Stuart Mill. And Perry revels in this kind of comparison. Asked last week about how he differs from Bush, he tellingly replied, “He’s a Yale graduate. I’m a Texas A&M graduate.”

Holding a bachelor's degree from Texas A&M is a sign of anti-intellectualism?

The seventh-largest university in the United States, A&M's enrollment for Fall 2010 was over 49,000 students in ten academic colleges. Texas A&M's designation as a land, sea, and space grant institution reflects a broad range of research with ongoing projects funded by agencies such as the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the National Institutes of Health, the National Science Foundation, and the Office of Naval Research. The school ranks in the top 20 American research institutes in terms of funding and has made notable contributions to such fields as animal cloning and petroleum engineering.

Shapiro himself appears to have a B.A. in history, which is a respectable degree; but it's not from Yale, it's from U. Michigan. That's not a bad school either!

Nevertheless, come off it. School pride, or state pride, are in no way signs of anti-intellectual sentiment.

UPDATE: Rep. Bachmann, by the way, has her B.A. from Winona State University, which is probably less well known because of its lack of a successful football team! Still, it sounds like a good school.

National rank: In 2011, WSU is ranked second among public universities in Minnesota in the 2011 edition of “Best Colleges” by U.S. News Media Group. Winona State has been ranked as one of America’s "100 Best College Buys" for quality and value, 15 years in a row. It has also been named among the "Best in the Midwest" by The Princeton Review for 8 years, and ranks as a "top-tier" institution among Midwestern universities, and the top 50 institutions in the Midwest Region Master's Category by the U.S. News & World Report.

She also holds a Doctor of Law degree from Oral Roberts University; and a Master of Laws degree from William and Mary.

Mitt Romney has a B.A. in English from Brigham Young, and M.B.A. and J.D. degrees from Harvard.

So, really, this "anti-intellectual" crowd is a fairly well-educated bunch. Their degrees (with the exception of Romney's English degree) tend toward the professional rather than the arts, a fact with both good and bad consequences.